Stephen Curry outduels LeBron James, now Warriors on brink of second straight title

CLEVELAND — Stephen Curry heard all the criticism. He saw all the Tweets, the funny Instagram posts at his expense. And, as he always does, he responded.

“If I had them in the road bag I would have definitely worn them and showed you how fire they are,” he said.

Thankfully for the Warriors, Curry did more than address rampant criticism his newly released sneakers garnered on social media. Friday, he also reacted to three games of sub-MVP performance. On the biggest stage, he offered a strong rebuttal when doubt was the highest.

Curry’s 38 points in the Warriors’ 108-97 win over the Cavaliers in Game 4 diffused the mounting pressure on his team and silenced the questions about his ability to carry the weight.

The nation was ready to write him off, and in the process revoke all the historical praise the Warriors have accumulated. But Curry showed up.

“He’s Steph Curry,” Steve Kerr said. “He’s the MVP for a reason. He doesn’t have the size and the strength to dominate a game physically, so he has to dominate with his skill, and that’s not an easy thing to do because your shot sometimes isn’t going to go in. But he has a lot of faith in himself, and he trusts his shot and he just kept firing, and tonight they went in.”

The Warriors head to Oakland with a chance to clinch a championship on home soil for the first time in franchise history. Several players came up huge as the Warriors’ bounced back from the 30-point debacle in Game 3.

Harrison Barnes had 14 points and eight rebounds, hitting two huge fourth-quarter 3-pointers. Draymond Green was possessed defensively, shutting down the middle as the Warriors closed the game with the Death Lineup. Andre Iguodala was just as stellar as ever. Even Anderson Varejao and James Michael McAdoo came off the end of the bench to have a hand in the outcome.

But it all mattered because Curry was back to himself.

Not physically. His right knee still isn’t fully recovered from the MCL sprain, and it won’t be until he gets rest. His limitations are evident every time he took the long road around defenders instead of slicing and cutting through the cracks. It is obvious to anyone who’s seen him finish this year he doesn’t have any burst when he shoots in the lane, having to gather and jump off two feet because he can’t get up quickly.

However, Curry’s problem the first three games — when he took just 38 shots, his lowest three-game total of the season — wasn’t his knee. It was his mindset. He was too passive. He lacked rhythm, hampered by foul trouble. His focus wandered and his confidence seemed to fade.

Curry was back Friday, though, in that mentally he was present. He was again the playmaker who puts relentless pressure on defense. He was on attack, instead of blending in, and good things happened because of it.

For starters, he found his shooting stroke, making 7 of 13 from 3. That opened up the rest of his game and left the Cavaliers’ defense scrambling.

“He’s a great player,” LeBron James said. “We knew he was going to come out and be aggressive. We made some mistakes and he made us pay for them. He made us pay every time we made a mistake.”

Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving had another big game, putting up 34 points — including a couple of highlights on Curry. James was an assist shy of a triple-double to go with his 25 points.

But in the first real close game of the series, Curry proved again to be the NBA’s best closer. On the road. In a game that would dramatically change the tone of the series.

He scored 13 points over the final seven-plus minutes, outdueling James and making the kind of shots that robbed the Cavaliers of hope.

A put-back at the 6:50 mark to put the Warriors up by six. A 3-pointer at 3:22 to answer an Irving layup and put the Warriors up 10. A back-door cut and layup just inside of a minute left to shove reality down the throats of Cleveland.

And afterward, the only question left was why is he ever doubted?

He came up big in Portland in Game 4, his now famous “I’m back!” game when he scored 17 in overtime. He was clutch down the stretch in a season-saving Game 6 in Oklahoma City — a 3 to get within 1, a 3 to tie it and a runner as the dagger — to finish the biggest game of the season as the Warriors rallied from a 3-1 series deficit.

And he has done it again in the Finals. Just like he did last year, scoring 37 in a pivotal Game 5, Curry ripped the heart out of the Cavaliers after earlier struggles left people doubting him.

“I wouldn’t have a championship ring,” Andre Iguodala said, “I wouldn’t have the accolades I have since I been on this team, without that guy on my team.”